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Sony PlayStation (Games)

PS3 Unreal Tournament 3 Delayed 70

Dr. Eggman writes "Gamasutra breaks the bad news from over at Midway. Midway states that Epic Games' Unreal Tournament 3 for the PS3 has been delayed into the first quarter of 2008. No official reason has been give for the delay, as only CEO David Zucker of Midway has released information. The PC version is still on track for a November release." Additional details from a Midway Conference call are available on Next Generation.
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PS3 Unreal Tournament 3 Delayed

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  • It keeps getting worse for Sony and the PS3, it seems like all the good games have been delayed until 2008 or later. I won't be buying one until Final Fantasy 13 comes out.
    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by LWATCDR ( 28044 )
      I wonder if this will have a cascade effect. How many games for the PS3 plan on using the UT3 engine and will they be delayed as well?
      Since the PC version is on track I would guess that it is an engine performance issue and not a content issue...
      In other words it looks as if the Cell programming model is bitting back.
      • Almost every cross-platform Unreal Engine 3 game has been delayed for the PS3 version: Stranglehold, Rainbow Six: Vegas, BlackSite: Area 51, GRAW 2, Medal of Honor: Airborne, Fatal Inertia, etc.

        Wikipedia has a list of upcoming games using this engine: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unreal_engine#Unreal_Engine_3_2 [wikipedia.org]
        • Right. It's the delay of the engine that really screwed over the ps3's lineup this year. The non-UT3 games seem to ether ship on time or with small delays of a week or two. Pretty much what you'd expect. Guitar Hero 3,Folklore, Rachet, and Eye of Judgement all hit this month, so i'm happy.

          The UT3 thing is probabaly a warning for the future that you don't want to put all your eggs in a 3rd party engine for a launching console. Just too many potential problems.

    • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

      by biocute ( 936687 )
      Same here. I won't be buying one until Duke Nukem Forever comes out.
    • It keeps getting worse for Sony and the PS3, it seems like all the good games have been delayed until 2008 or later. I won't be buying one until Final Fantasy 13 comes out.

      By then it'll be a more reasonable price. I paid full price and I feel okay with it. It's a nice machine. Doubles as a linux boxen/truly open media center. It has soem okay games no major unit movers yet but I'm hoping MGS4 and FFXII will bring it some respect.
  • by kosanovich ( 678657 ) on Wednesday October 03, 2007 @10:39AM (#20838091)
    Mark Rein responded to this and said that midway was announcing the delay because "they have an obligation to their shareholders to let them know about the possibility of a delay" but Epic is still trying to get the PS3 version shipped before the end of 2007. He also said that the delay will mean that the PS3 version ships with all the maps that the PC version will have.

    http://threespeech.com/blog/?p=604 [threespeech.com]
    • Dang! I was going to post that (like I did in the comments of my own firehose submission. Well, here's the link [epicgames.com] anyways. Also, he said the PC version will have a demo come out before release.
    • by Shagg ( 99693 )
      Yeah, it sounds like this story was from an investor conference call, not a press release. I thought it was a federal SEC thing that public companies were required to report the worst possible cases to investors? It doesn't mean that they'll necessarily happen that way. A lot of companies file "doom and gloom" things like this for stock purposes, but nobody in the media usually pays much attention to it.
    • That's funny, I remember that Epic said the reason why those maps wouldn't be on the PS3 version was "the PS3 lacks the resources to ensure smooth gameplay", now it turns out it's not true?

      Go Epic!
  • I wonder if this lends any support to Silicon Knight's claims that the engine wasn't ready for them, and that the PS3 engine build was also way off target when they licensed it. It seems they're still aiming for a December release, but as a public company need to inform shareholders if they may miss that target. On the plus side, they've managed to get every map from the PC version working on the PS3, contrary to their earlier statements.
    • I don't think so. SK was claiming that EPIC purposefully witheld things so that Gears of War would look better than the competition. UT3 is an EPIC game though. It's their in-house engine... Why would they withold from themselves?
      • This probably won't help SK's lawsuit, and might in fact hurt it. They have two things to prove in their lawsuit - that the engine wasn't ready and that Epic did that intentionally. This proves the engine wasn't up to snuff, but might hurt them because it shows that Epic itself was affected by the engine's preparedness, so why would they do this intentionally? Of course, the conspiracy theorists in the crowd can fire up their argument that Epic is doing this to help deflate the lawsuit. If the lawsuit s
        • by p0tat03 ( 985078 )
          Actually, I believe SK's main claim is that Epic failed to deliver a working 360 build by the date stipulated in their contract. The whole "they were hoarding it themselves for GOW" is just fluff meant to sensationalize it and maybe up the damages a tad (though it certainly isn't provable in any case). This announcement has no bearing on SK's lawsuit I don't think - after all, it should be clear as day if Epic missed the deadline on the 360.
    • It appears that it is caused by engine readiness.

      According to 1Up, Midways CEO said that there have been technical issues with the Unreal Engine 3.0 which caused delays for Stranglehold and now Area 51 (coming out 3 weeks after the 360 version) and Ut3. However he says that the technical issues have been "ironed out" and after UT3 the PS3 versions of games using the engine will be released at the same time as the 360 versions.

      we'll see if that happens.

      Here's the link to 1UP http://www.1up.com/do/ne [1up.com]
  • by PlatyPaul ( 690601 ) on Wednesday October 03, 2007 @10:44AM (#20838195) Homepage Journal
    Holy wrong-point-from-the-article Batman! The big deal is that Midway is having to revise their Q3 reportings because of this, indicating a massive difference in their valuation.

    From TFA:

    Publisher and developer Midway has announced that it is revising its Q3 estimates due primarily to delays of its headline PlayStation 3 titles

    For its third quarter, Midway has revised its sales estimates downward from $50 million to $39 million, and revised full year sales down sharply from $225 million to $170 million

    In its conference call with investors, Zucker admitted that the company has "encountered some bumps along the way" in creating its standardized engine technology that it hopes to use for its future titles, but said the the company "continues to believe it's the fastest path to market growth."

    If you want an update on Midway Games stock, take a look over here [morningstar.com].
    • Re: (Score:1, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward
      There are rumours that UE3-based Midway home-grown games (eg Stranglehold) may be released on the PS3 before UT3 itself.

      That's quite an achievement.
  • ... for a bad PS3 christmas. GTA IV and UT3 were supposed to keep their sales numbers respectable.
    • When were the sales numbers for the PS3 ever acceptable? With Sony being so confident before release, saying that everyone was going to want one, no matter how much it cost, just because it's a playstation, I would say that there numbers have always been pretty low.
      • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

        by king-manic ( 409855 )
        When were the sales numbers for the PS3 ever acceptable? With Sony being so confident before release, saying that everyone was going to want one, no matter how much it cost, just because it's a playstation, I would say that there numbers have always been pretty low.

        Their at 1/3 of what the 360 is at (4.6 mil sold vs ~12 mil sold; pre halo 3 numbers). They are "catching up" but not int he US market. Mostly Japan and other markets where the 360 doesn't expand as fast. The 360 is doing pitifully in Japan likel
        • The 360 is doing pitifully in Japan likely due to not having a single clue how to market it there.

          Or not marketing at all. On launch day there were reports of Japanese gamers seeing the 360 in stores and thinking it was just a white Xbox1.
        • by amuro98 ( 461673 )
          I don't think Microsoft, or anyone else, seriously expected the 360 to do well in Japan - not after the Xbox, anyways.

          However, even in Japan, the PS3 is still struggling because of the Wii. The Wii's been going strong worldwide, but in Japan, it's burying the PS3 (and the 360) by a huge margin. This makes me wonder what the fate of all those JRPGs that were looking to the PS3 as their chosen platform. Will the 360 get more JRPGs this time around? Or will we see them all migrate to the Wii? The 360 alr
          • I don't think Microsoft, or anyone else, seriously expected the 360 to do well in Japan - not after the Xbox, anyways.

            However, even in Japan, the PS3 is still struggling because of the Wii. The Wii's been going strong worldwide, but in Japan, it's burying the PS3 (and the 360) by a huge margin. This makes me wonder what the fate of all those JRPGs that were looking to the PS3 as their chosen platform. Will the 360 get more JRPGs this time around? Or will we see them all migrate to the Wii? The 360 already h
          • "This makes me wonder what the fate of all those JRPGs that were looking to the PS3 as their chosen platform." "Or will we see them all migrate to the Wii?" I would love to see the Wii get some good RPG's
  • by OmegaBlac ( 752432 ) on Wednesday October 03, 2007 @12:50PM (#20840269)
    According to Mark Rein, posting at the Epic Forums, they still are aiming for a release date of the PS3 version sometime before the end of this year.

    http://forums.epicgames.com/showthread.php?p=25003889#post25003889 [epicgames.com]

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